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YouTube the new social target for big beauty brands

By Andrew MCDOUGALL, 07-Jan-2013

In the visual world of the beauty industry it should come as no surprise that video sharing platform YouTube is tipped as one of the largest sources of referral for the big cosmetics brands.

The majority of beauty brands register a social media site as a top eight source of traffic to and from its own site, with Facebook and Twitter originally topping these charts; but we are now seeing the emergence of YouTube’s power.

According to Market intelligence firm L2 ThinkTank, the influence of Facebook and Twitter is slowly declining and YouTube has emerged in the last year as the top source of upstream traffic for twice as many brands.

“Facebook remains the largest source of referral traffic, but a year-over-year analysis suggests that its influence is waning as it declined to 71 percent in 2012 from 89 percent in 2011; whilst Twitter, has essentially fallen off the map, registering no upstream or downstream traffic for beauty brands despite referring some — albeit minimal — traffic last year,” says the New York-headquartered firm.

Growing significance

YouTube’s growing significance for the beauty industry is also evident in dramatic increases year-over-year in video views.

“The vlogger culture remains strong on YouTube and beauty brands are not only trying to get their products into vloggers’ hands, they are also peppering vlogger videos with InVideo ads,” explains L2.

“L’Oreal Paris featured ads on eight of the top fifteen YouTube beauty vlogger videos. Bare Escentuals, Lancome, Maybelline and Urban Decay also purchased.”

When it comes to the video arena, it certainly looks like its beauty behemoth L’Oréal that has cracked the code.

Setting the example

Nine of the eleven labels under the L’Oréal umbrella maintain in-language YouTube accounts in at least one of the EU-5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) countries.

According to L2 ThinkTank, L’Oréal Paris boasts the greatest channel video views of any beauty brand in each of the EU-5 markets, and other L’Oréal companies dominate the remainder of the Top 5 lists.

“On average, L’Oréal brands register 50 times more video views per branded YouTube account than those under its competitor conglomerate, The Estée Lauder Companies,” it says.